In off-road or off highway areas throughout the United States, any person riding or driving an off highway vehicle (OHV), including all-terrain vehicles (ATVS) and motorcycles, must mount a safety flag on a flexible whip to the OHV when in use. Safety flags provide a necessary safety feature, allowing pedestrians, emergency personnel, and other riders to locate an ATV and rider more easily and avoid collisions or other incidents.
ATV safety flag whips are often made of fiberglass and vary in size, but two diameters commonly used are ¼ inch and 5/16 inch. ATV safety flag whips are often mounted by forcing the bottom or butt end of the fiberglass whip into a bored out ½ inch bolt, which then mounts in a ½ inch diameter receptacle usually found on a vehicle's rear bumper or grab bar and is further secured by a ½ inch nut.
As often happens with off highway use or accidents, these whips break. Being made of fiberglass, a break is never clean. The broken ends of the whip are frayed, to one degree or another, often in dozens or even hundreds of razor-sharp and hair-thin shards protruding from the broken sections.
In order to remount such safety flags, conventional whip mount designs require removing the ½ inch nut and mounting bolt from the ATV and cutting off the shattered whip shards with a knife or other cutting utensil and forcing the broken butt section out of the mounting bolt. Once trimmed, the whip is then forced back into the mounting hole; often a tight fit and sometimes only possible with the use of a hammer or other tools not easily carried on an ATV.